


ACCEPT/DECLINE - A Digimon Fan-Fiction in 52 Parts

by JBMiles



Category: Digimon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19217287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBMiles/pseuds/JBMiles
Summary: Inspired by a bevy of Digimon media, ACCEPT/DECLINE is a Digimon AU set in a world just a little different from our own. When the barrier between the Digital World and reality is punctured by the Digital HAZARD, a ragtag group of friends must work together with the mysterious HYPNOS to put things right before nine realms face annihilation.





	1. PREFACE

> **'PREFACE'**

 

> (from ‘M//GARD - Digital Eden’ by David Wallace, Professor of FTL Sciences and Digital Sociology at the University of Tokyo)
> 
> In the last days of the 20th Century, the world seemed to drag to a crawl. Our culture grew stale and stagnant - as if in tense anticipation of the forever war to come. In the days between Columbine and 9/11, we held our breath as a species, waiting to see what great and terrible things the new millennium would bring.
> 
> Except, of course, on-line.
> 
> Youths and adults alike were drawn like fireflies to the comforting glow of cathode-ray monitors, forging parasocial relationships through telephone networks, hidden behind usernames and avatars. As the Old Internet grew larger and more sophisticated, cultures grew within, as firmly ingrained in the structures of the World Wide Web as microbial life-forms in the human gut. Take them out, and the whole thing would grind to a juddering, violent halt. But as in real-life, the Old Internet was rife with factionalism, fierce rhetoric, and, eventually, acts of brazen criminality and terror. By the time the planes struck the towers in New York, we had entered the Digital Age. Lord knows what it would have become without what happened next.
> 
> In 1999, Doctor Hondo Daisuke discovered a method - one he has wisely kept under lock and key - to accelerate and enhance the signals transmitted through fiber-optic cables. Early tests revealed that the Hondo Method was no mere technological upgrade, but the purest quantum leap in computing since perhaps the very beginning. What Hondo had discovered was a means to transmit information instantaneously, irrespective of difference in geography. The Hondo Method was, in short, faster-than-light.
> 
> Daisuke considered his options carefully. No-one knew the Method except him and his team - who were forbidden to speak out. Rumours abound about the five years between his breakthrough and that fateful day - the day M//GARD was revealed to the world. Some ex-teammates allege that the good doctor hired Yakuza thugs to intimidate them into silence - while others still suggest that the Method was not a solo invention. Talk of the AIM account ‘DIABLO’ still surfaces on M//GARD every few years, claims that Hondo was working under a pseudonym with an unknown party as he refined the software and hardware architecture that the Method and his vision would require.
> 
> Slander, of course. Unless it’s printed, and then it’s libel.
> 
> None of us expected what we were given in August 2004. None of us. Hondo took to the stage and not only revealed that he had distributed and established a basic FTL-fiber network already, but that it operated entirely separately from the preexisting Internet.  
>  “I refuse,” he said, “to accept that we will be limited to phoney relationships and hostile interaction when we go online. The Internet is a place for delinquents and encourages cruel and divisive behaviour. I chose to build something better. I chose M//GARD.”
> 
> And so he pulled back the curtain, as it were, on the ‘new internet’ - but of course, M//GARD is so much more. With a patented super-screen behind him, Hondo placed the first of the first-generation D-VICES on his head - god, it was so clunky - and wrists. Then, on the screen, we saw a world like no other.
> 
> It has been fifteen years since M//GARD changed the world. Now, all information travels faster than light through a digital environment built by every user and moderated by nearly ten thousand individuals round the clock. Our avatars grow ever more realistic, our personal data ever more intrinsically married to M//GARD as we push for greater transparency in the servers and instances we create. The eighth-generation D-VICE debuts next month beneath the Eiffel Tower, and as a demonstration of the latest technology Hondo and the Big 20 - representatives of the G20 countries who serve as the figureheads of M//GARD’s mod team - will attempt to generate a real-time simulation of the entire city of Paris for as long as is physically sustainable.
> 
> The future, my friends, is already here.
> 
>  

* * *

 

'AIM CHATLOG MAR 6 1999'

00:35 Hondoughnut: u up

00:35 DIABLO: always

00:40 Hondoughnut: who ARE you?

00:41 DIABLO: why u ask

00:44 Hondoughnut: i tried ur idea  
Hondoughnut: it worked  
Hondoughnut: but that’s impossible

00:44 DIABLO: lol  
DIABLO: nothing impossible

00:45 Hondoughnut: u say weird shit like this all the time

00:45 DIABLO: is funny

00:46 Hondoughnut: why

00:46 DIABLO: u not understand why it funny???

00:50 Hondoughnut: wtf? no

00:50 DIABLO: u think ‘impossible’ exist??? So funny!!!

00:51 Hondoughnut: look. U helped me do this. I need 2 kno why and how and who.

00:51 DIABLO: LOLOLOL

00:52 Hondoughnut: it’s not funny!

00:52 DIABLO: ppl are SO funny

00:53 Hondoughnut:...

00:53 DIABLO: if u prick em they bleed

00:55 Hondoughnut: who ARE you, DIABLO

00:55 DIABLO: friend

01:00 Hondoughnut: but WHY. why r u helping me. Why r u my ‘friend’. Why do u kno so much

01:00 DIABLO: f̴̩̈́͒͛͝ò̷̱̽̾̚r̶̰͐̍̂̊ ̷͚͍͔̱̐̈́H̷̯̙͆İ̵̳̼̇M̵͇̍͊̕͝

01:02 Hondoughnut: wtf

01:02 DIABLO: d̷̫͛̈́̎͠ë̵̩͚̮́v̸͉͚͉̫̀͒̽̐i̴̧͎͌͋̔͝ͅl̶̳͓̻̼͗ ̸͔́̈́̋m̸͖̝̾͗̉ā̶͚̈̒k̵͍̅́̆e̷̪̹̠̖̊ ̸̢̻͖͗̀w̵̬̕ő̵͓̞͝ř̵̝̗͈̜̊k̸̘̬͋̒ ̵͎̯͎͂͆͝f̸̣͂́́ö̸̖͉́r̸̫̗͎̒͋̿ ̵̦̹͐ǐ̶̗̯͔̦̾̎d̶͍̓l̴̛̮̗͍̊͜͝e̵̼͚̗͂́̀͠ ̸̣̂h̷͈̅̕ą̴͚̽͘n̵̢̩͋̎d̵̜̪̯̉

HONDOUGHNUT DISCONNECTED


	2. Shattered Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world changes forever when all hell breaks loose at a presentation in Paris.

A bead of sweat made a precarious journey down Hondo's neck, where it joined a few dozen brethren in his shirt collar. A few more stood out on his smooth, shaven scalp.

He was nervous.

 _Not that I have any right to be_ , he thought.  _We know this is going to work. We tested it last year. It worked then._ But he thumbed his cuff anyway. A habit he'd picked up in the weeks before the first test, all those years ago. "The devil," said Hondo, "makes work for idle hands."

Above him stood the Eiffel Tower. Before him, the eighth-generation D-VICE - the latest magnum opus from a man who had made nothing but magnum opera - and his Big 20, those hand-picked moderators who made M//GARD run. This was, as it was in 2005, as it was in 1999, his moment of triumph.

"The devil makes work for idle hands."

Hondo stepped forwards. He felt the cool Parisian breeze on his bare chest. He hadn't worn a shirt under his jackets for years, directed by his lifestyle coach and image consultants to cultivate a fashion best described as liberally stolen from the pages of  _TRANSMETROPOLITAN_ , with the persona of a burn-out techno-hippie. He didn't mind. It was comforting to know that with the greatest will in the world - with all the vaunted transparency and true-to-life nature of M//GARD, where so many now spent their time - that real life was still a matter of faking it until making it.

And so Hondo Daisuke moved forwards, out of the shadows and into the spotlight as the gathered news media and the two-thousand guests broke into customary applause. Silent applause. Hondo had long insisted on 'audio-neutral' shows of adulation.  Two-thousand people jazz-handing in the middle of Paris. Sublime.

"Good evening," he said, in smooth, well-trained tones that, to the wise, betrayed the careful education of a voice coach insistent on keeping him 'sounding Japanese'. "And welcome to Generation Eight."

Furious jazz hands.

"First - an apology. A sincere and humble one. It has been - by my measure - a long time since G7. Too long. You had all grown used to the annual conference - the annual upgrade. But you must remember that in the past, the gaps were greater - because we innovated further."

He grinned. 

"I will be honest - we were tempted to release 'Gen 7b'. But we knew you deserved better. And so - here we are. Minutes away from the next quantum leap - minutes away from digitising all of Paris for an indefinite period."

Above, a black cloud formation boiled, foreboding. It was not noticed. All eyes were on the most important man of the 21st Century as he put the D-VICE on his head, clipped the sensors to his wrists, and popped the interface nodes onto his fingers.  And there was no need to follow suit - because everyone there was already logged in. They had been since the conference started - the lenses of their D-VICEs retracted so they might look on him with their own eyes.

But then they were closed, and all present - and everyone watching, across the globe - was in M//GARD.

* * *

How to describe the environment Hondo and his engineers had built for this stage of the conference? It was a deliberate effort to mimic his surroundings crudely - as if to demonstrate how much the Gen 8 would improve the system. A tilted Eiffel Tower that pulsed with neon light, a Champs Elysees that ran at 90 degrees to the ground, connected to the floor by a curving, perpetually-moving Arc de Triomphe.

Hondo had briefed everyone -  _everyone_ \- on the process. All the D-VICEs in Paris were, from the moment he turned on the 'hero' G8, being upgraded to the newest firmware. With this, the algorithms innate to M//GARD would siphon up data in unprecedented ways, interpret it in unprecedented ways, and deliver it in, yes, unprecedented ways - to generate a real-time M//GARD simulation of the city. It would be  _alive_ , and while all users would exist within it, the Big 20 and their subordinate teams had taken the time to develop a process that would also ensure that the logged-out, everyday citizen would be replaced in M//GARD by NORNS, the system's procedurally-generated human simulacra interface.

The firmware uploaded in mere moments, and the crude simulation melted away to reveal a peerless imitation.

And then?

A dragon smashed into the Eiffel Tower.

* * *

 

Immediately, Hondo threw off his D-VICE as he recognised the tell-tale sign of a real event - the smell. Ozone, this one. Crisp and cruel in the nose. As Eiffel's most famous son crumbled and burned, Hondo did the unthinkable.

He turned off the simulation.

The two-thousand, the news, and shortly after, everyone else watching realised that this was no crafty prank - no cheeky gag at the fidelity of the M//GARD projection.

A genuine, bona-fide dragon of approximately fifty feet in height had smashed into the Eiffel Tower, crushing it with sheer force.

And now it was writhing, struggling to right itself as it fought what was, impossibly, very obviously an angel, or something like it - a winged humanoid of about twelve feet in height, with wings, arms, and feet made of blades. It dodged, ducked, slashed and struck impossibly fast, reactions like nothing ever seen, as the dragon - huge and hulking, with tattered wings the colour of hot lava, scythes protruding from both forearms, and a strange pattern burned into both shoulders and the chest - bit and clawed aimlessly, white eyes rolling back into the socket.

People started screaming. Police and private security sprung into action, diverting the crowd in organised, streamlined channels prepared for emergency exit - but nothing like this.

And all the while, Hondo watched with tears in his eyes.

"The devil makes work for idle hands."

As Paris went into lockdown, the fight continued. The dragon? belching fire, spitting brimstone, swinging severed beams from the tower. The angel? Slicing, slashing, moving with lightning speed and glinting in the evening sun. Neither seemed to be making a dent in the other, and neither seemed to tire. And when night fell, they kept going.

But before night fell - before the dragon fell - before Hondo put on a show - eyes were already trained on Paris, six-thousand miles away. Buried in the building they called _Tochō,_ twin operatives, experts in their field, used every secret program and covert line of code to watch the area. They - and they alone - had known what was coming, although they had never anticipated the scale and scope.

As M//GARD representatives prepared the stage, the women, enveloped in the most sophisticated pirate D-VICE imaginable, saw the numbers fly by in a specialised simulation unlike any other. Ones and zeroes, binary code, blended in with reports of dark matter particles, flare-ups in the LHC, and of young children afflicted with sudden apocalyptic terror.

On the gantry above what they called the Orchestra Pit, Yamaki toyed with a brass zippo. Clik. Clik.

The Twins kept watching the signs. Clik. Clik.

And at the moment before all hell broke loose, they sounded the alarm.

"We have realisation."

* * *

 

As the angel fought the dragon in the ruins of the Champ de Mars - long after night had fallen - the air was disturbed by the whud-whud-whud of helicopter blades and three choppers entered Parisian airspace. Inside each, a crack team of 'cybercommando'. In the first one - Yamaki. Their logo - the inverse of the symbol on the dragon's body. The name beneath it?

HYPNOS.

The first helicopter fired a single projectile that billowed strange smoke that seemed to vanish at the edge of the cloud, leaving garish iridescent particles. From his seat inside the first craft, Yamaki operated a delicate device that sat in his lap.

"Analog frequencies. Sound. Light."

"Sir?"

Yamaki went silent. He simply carried on working - and as he did, the gas cloud began to flicker in and out of existence, rippling between present and absent, flashing brightly with pulsing strobe. And when it finally disappeared entirely with a noise like a feedbacking guitar, the monsters were gone.


End file.
